Conventional garment articles, such as disposable diapers and other disposable absorbent articles, have typically employed adhesive or mechanical fasteners which attach appointed waistband sections of the articles around a wearer. In addition, various configurations of waist elastics, leg elastics, elasticized liners, and elasticized outercovers have been employed on garment articles to help produce and maintain the fit of the articles about the body contours of the wearer.
The external surfaces of such disposable absorbent products may include a nonwoven fibrous material or a matte-finished film material. In some arrangements, pattern embossments have been formed into the outer surface of the outer cover to provide a decorative pattern.
It has been proposed to subject a bonded web of continuous thermoplastic polypropylene filaments to hot embossing in a gross pattern, thereby producing a permanent web deformation and increasing the effective web thickness.
It has also been proposed to selectively point-bond or pattern-bond a non-stretched lofty nonwoven fibrous material to a stretched elastomeric film, then allowing the film to retract, thereby gathering the fibrous material in the direction of the elastomer film retraction. This causes the fibrous material to arch up away from the elastomer film, thereby producing fibrous pile or arched filament height between the selective bond points. This method, however, generally requires a comparatively expensive, sophisticated elastomeric film laminae, the inclusion of which may not be desirable within the finished outer cover laminate design.
It has also been proposed to freeze thermoplastic filaments onto a three dimensional forming wire in order to produce a low density, high loft finished web. Such a method has employed a curtain of molten meltblown polypropylene that is deposited onto a three-dimensional forming wire. The very fine filament diameters and relatively short individual filament lengths of the meltblown fibers provide an integrated filamentary mat onto the forming wire that provides suitable three dimensional stability in the formed web after it is removed from the forming wire.
Conventional garment articles, such as those described above, have not provided desired levels of durability, low cost, aesthetic appeal and tactile properties. As a result, there has been a continued need for garments having improvements in such properties.